Alternatives to D&D


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How about Exalted? Go cruise the forums over at RPG.net and it's as if every other post is "[Exalted] yadda yadda..?" this and "[Exalted] blah blah!" that. Almost seems more popular than D&D, at least over there.
 

There are multiple ways to approaching this question...

There a great number of non-D&D rpgs out there. Not only are there multiple games out there in print, but there are piles of out-of-print games at used books stores. How many of them are "successful" is open to huge debate; as a game-consumer, a "successful game" is one that I run and enjoy, but that definition wouldn't work for most game companies.

D&D is the top dog, but not to quite the same level as in the earlier days. Go into any Borders or Barnes & Noble and you can see White Wolf games as well as WotC; in several of them you can find Battlestar Galatica and/or Serenity as well. Due to this, there is a slightly more open vision of rpgs for the general public, a notion that they are more than simply D&D.

D&D is still the top do, as I said, and will remain that way for quite some time, perhaps as long as tabletop rpgs exist. It has a huge advantage over the other games -- it's name is synonymous with rpgs. In many ways it is the Starbucks or McDonalds of rpgs. It is ubiquitous and, in many ways, the only fully accessible tabletop rpg out there -- you can find it all over the place, while other games you have to go searching. As such it tends to cycle in on itself -- since it is more available, it is the game that most gamers start with ... and thus becomes the "standard" by which other games are measured ... and as it is the one most people learn first (and learning a game requires a noticeable amount of time and desire) it remains the most popular. This is NOT to say it is not a good game; I don't mean that at all, but it does mean that its ubiquity becomes a bit more difficult for other systems to gain traction, even games that specific gamers might actually prefer (or not ... some people try other games and still quite happily go back to D&D).

Savage Worlds is doing okay; NWoD is doing fine; GURPS has fallen down in this incarnation, though exactly why I am uncertain; SotC did very well when it first came out and continues all right, but the sales appear to have tapered off; Battlestar Galactica and Serenity sell, much as does Star Wars, even to non-gamer "completists", thus even if the numbers are not to the D&D level, they are certainly acceptable.
 

GURPS has fallen down in this incarnation, though exactly why I am uncertain
Pricing, perhaps?

Could be that the full colour hardcover thing just wasn't going to work out for GURPS (in general, I mean).


Woas said:
How about Exalted? Go cruise the forums over at RPG.net and it's as if every other post is "[Exalted] yadda yadda..?" this and "[Exalted] blah blah!" that. Almost seems more popular than D&D, at least over there.
Well, they do have a separate [d20 fantasy + D&D] forum, that sees (relatively speaking) a lot of traffic.
 
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In terms of fairly generic fantasy alternatives to D&D:

Others have already mentioned Warhammer FRPG - although the status of the 2nd edition seems to be in some doubt - there are rumours that Fantasy Flight is developing a 3rd edition.

Mongoose is churning out a steady stream of supplements for the last incarnation of Runequest.

ICE are selling Rolemaster and HARP - though I'm not sure how active their publishing programme is.

True20, GURPS and Savage Worlds can all be used for fantasy.

Seems like plenty of options to me.
 


Is there any preview about how Dragon Age will play?

While I like the DD4E brilliant new mechanics, I do not like other aspects of the game, so my quest for the One Perfect Rpg To Match My Tastes continues, will DA be a valiant candidate?
 

GR hasn't done any Dragon Age previews yet, at least not that I've seen. (I don't know if they've set a release date yet; are they going to have it at Gen Con? Edit: ah, found it on the DA page -- scheduled for September. They might have a few copies at GC, then.)
 

What's big around here, besides D&D (D&D appears to be the number 1 game currently, but not by a wide margin - it makes up about 35% of the games I've seen going on through the extended groups I know).

- Savage Worlds
-- Savage CyberPunk
-- Savage ShadowRun
-- Deadlands Reloaded
- RIFTS
-- Beyond the Supernatural (?!?!)
- new World of Darkness
-- Vampire: the Requiem
-- Hunter: the something or other
-- Mage: the Ascension
- Exalted 2
- Scion
- Shadowrun 4e
-- Shadowrun 3e
- Traveller in a variety of editions
- Serenity
- Dark Heresy
- Alpha Omega (it's a local game)

And we have a lot of old-school games still going too of course... AD&D1e, Aftermath!, Gamma World 1e/2e (I'm running that one), and so on.
 

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